Saturday, September 29, 2012

Michael Bond is best-known for his beloved books about Paddington Bear. But he has also written a series of 16 mystery novels featuring the gourmand sleuth, Monsieur Pamplemousse, and his faithful hound, Pommes Frites.

Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates is the sixth book in the series and finds Pamplemousse trying to thwart a plot to humiliate his boss, the editor of France's premiere restaurant guide, and ruin the company. He is helped along the way by his clue-sniffing dog and an attractive computer expert who can cook a pot-au-feu just like his mother (including plugging the bones with potatoes to keep the marrow in).

The humor is a little silly (Pamplemousse loses his clothes and has to go in drag, for instance) and the computer crime so dated as to be incomprehensible, but the book has a decently puzzling plot and the charm needed to make a successful cozy, plus a Paris setting and plenty of food talk. Perfect for a chilly autumn afternoon.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other books in the Monsieur Pamplemousse series, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

To many, a squirrel is a squirrel and by any other name is still just a squirrel. . . . They are also capable of ravaging birdfeeders worse than jays, though their brilliant acrobatics to defeat "squirrel-proof" feeders are surely worth the price of a bag or two of the best black sunflower seeds.

Charles Darwin contended that the elements of a tangled bank are endlessly interesting, ever evolving, and can explain the entire living world. These essays were originally published in Pyle's monthly column for Orion and Orion Afield magazines. They cover topics from Mexican monarchs to bookstores to the love of hops.

I love that the author's back-cover biography says, "He is often associated with butterflies, slugs, and Bigfoot." That is priceless! Especially when accompanied by a photo of Pyle in a moss coat:

When Vera decides to travel to an old house in the New England
countryside for a month-long escape from some devastating news about her
daughter, Cassie, she has no idea her life is about to change forever.
It begins innocently enough—peeling the old wallpaper from the walls as
a favor to the house’s owner. What she discovers underneath—written in
India ink on the very walls of the house by a woman named Beth, in
1919—is the beginning of the reader’s unsettling crossing into the
unknown world underneath the paper.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

This is a collection of essays, originally published in Orion and Orion Afield magazines, exploring Charles Darwin’s contention that the elements of a tangled bank, and by extension all the living world, are endlessly interesting and ever evolving. The essays cover topics from squirrels to bookstores to the love of hops.

I want to read this mostly because the author's back-cover biography says, "He is often associated with butterflies, slugs, and Bigfoot." That is priceless! Especially when accompanied by this photo:

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Four times a year, I take a look at what books I've read to that point and see
what kind of progress I've made on my books lists and reading
projects. I do it mostly to force myself to update my lists, not because these are particularly interesting posts.

This is the first of three quarterly blog assessment posts. This first
part addresses the book lists. Part Two, coming soon, will take a look
at the author lists. Part Three will deal with the challenges I
joined this year.

My book lists are over in the right-side column. These are now divided
into Prize Winners and "Must Reads" and include lists of books I have
read or intend to read for some reason or another. Also in the
right-side column are lists of my favorite authors. I add to these lists
of lists from time to time.

I only listed a list below if I read a book from it this year.

NOTE: If you are working on any of these
lists, please leave a comment here or on the post for the list (click
on the title below or in the right-hand column) and leave a link to
any related post. I will add the links on the list post.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The first recipe in each chapter is a learning recipe for those who are new to cooking with grassfed -- or any -- beef and want to follow a foundational recipe such as meatloaf, grilled steak, stir-fry, roast beef, or stock. The recipes that follow within each chapter illustrate technique variations for the appropriate beef cut.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

Pure Beef is my new favorite cookbook. I have a freezer full of grassfed beef and need some pointers for how to cook it right. Curry explains everything from the cuts, to how to thaw it, to how to cook it and what to cook with it.

Lynne Curry also has a terrific blog, Stories that Feed You, that is chock-o-block full of all kinds of interesting recipes and information about many sorts of food.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Charles Dickens may be the best-known novelist of all times. Probably everyone has read at least one of his books or at the very least seen a screen adaptation. He lived from 1812 to 1870 and published 20 novels, as well as short stories, a few plays, non-fiction books, and even some poetry.

I read several of Dickens' more famous novels by the time I finished college, but have been in the mood to read the rest and start re-reading ever since I got a lovely matching set a couple of years ago.

Dickens' novels are listed below. Those I have read are in red (although I may like to re-read some of them); those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

This is 134-year-old tradition in our family -- not for the women necessarily to be part of it, but my dad was blessed with nine children, six of which were girls. So his cowboy crew was made up of daughters.

Tough by Nature is a first-rate, gorgeous coffee table book filled with portraits of 49 real women ranchers of the western United States. Each portrait is accompanied by a short biography of the woman portrayed.

Artist Lynda Lanker. Spent close to 20 years on the portraits and stories that went into this book. She worked with oil pastels, pencil and charcoal, egg tempura, plate and stone lithography, engraving, and drypoint to capture the personalities of her subjects -- the matriarchs of the West.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel can never escape their pasts or the angry demons in their heads, even to do a little fishing in Montana. Mobster Didi Gee died in a suspicious plane crash years before, but when his goons turn up in Montana, working for a pair of oil baron brothers, Dave and Clete get sucked into a whirling vortex of violence, sex, booze, and vengeance.

Swan Peak is the 16th book in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series and exemplifies everything that is good and bad about the long-running saga. Burke is the best there is at writing literary, atmospheric mysteries peopled with complex characters and glorifying their settings (usually Louisiana, occasionally Montana). The stories are dark, sometimes a little twisted, and always exciting, with multi-faceted plots addressing important social issues.

But sometimes Burke lays it on with a trowel, and he does in Swan Peak. In addition to mobsters and crooked oil barons, there's a sadistic prison guard tracking an escaped convict, a self-medicating adulterous wife, a charlatan preacher with an eye for teenage girls, a porn producer and his call girl companion, and a vicious serial killer. That's a lot of bad guys crowded into the Bitterroot Valley. And all of them are deformed, addicted, damaged, particularly cruel, or otherwise extra creepy.

Swan Peak is a page turner, but may leave the reader needing to take a Burke break.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

Tough by Nature is a gorgeous coffee table book filled with portraits of 49 real women ranchers of the western United States. Each portrait is accompanied by a short biography of the woman portrayed.

The book represents close to 20 years of effort by artist Lynda Lanker. She worked with oil pastels, pencil and charcoal, egg tempura, plate and stone lithography, engraving, and drypoint to capture the personalities of her subjects -- the matriarchs of the West.

Tough by Nature is a first class production and is going straight to the top of my gift-giving list this Christmas. Even if I narrowed my list to spirited, independent women friends with a connection to the American West and a penchant for art, I could come up with over a dozen possible recipients.

This was a "leap-frog" giveaway, meaning I had three copies to giveaway to Rose City Reader readers. Mary extravagantly threw in another copy, for a total of four! And each winner will get to host another giveaway for an additional copy.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: Memories of her dire past fade as Celia Hagen enjoys life in Switzerland as a best-selling author, surrounded by an extended family, her beloved Benicio, and their imaginative young son Benny. But when Benny disappears from a train during an unexpected stop in the French Provencal countryside, Celia suspects her past may not be buried after all. With Benny gone, she quickly realizes her life wasn’t nearly as idyllic as she believed. Infuriated by the unorthodox search efforts of Interpol and the French police, Celia, along with her older son Oliver, undertakes her own search, only to find that the village where Benny vanished has its own chilling history, and her interference in the case will have grave and irreversible consequences.

In the follow up to Audrey Braun’s best-selling debut, A Small Fortune, Celia discovers just how quickly everyone she loves can spiral toward a life—or death—that none of them could have seen coming.

I've had my eye on this one because I have a freezer filled with grass fed beef. It promises to help me cook this entire cow: "With chapters organized by cooking methods and corresponding beef cuts, its 140 recipes are customized for leaner, heat-sensitive grassfed beef and model a healthful and sustainable approach to meat eating."

Lynne Curry is a food writer and former vegetarian who now lives in Joseph, Oregon, in the Wallowa Valley -- one of my favorite places in the world.

This is a collection of essays, originally published in Orion and Orion Afield magazines, exploring Charles Darwin’s contention that the elements of a tangled bank, and by extension all the living world, are endlessly interesting and ever evolving. The essays range from hops to independent bookstores to the monarchs of Mexico.

I want to read this mostly because the author's back-cover biography and picture compel me to:

The standards for what makes olive oil “extra virgin” are both objective and subjective. EVOO is supposed to come from fresh pressed (or centrifuged) olives maintained at relatively low temperatures, without heat or chemical treatment. Various regulations govern the chemical makeup of EVOO. The EU, for example, sets limits on the amount of free fatty acids and peroxides that can be in olive oil and still be called EVOO.

On the subjective side, the flavor of the oil determines whether it is “extra virgin.” EVOO should have a balance of fruity, bitter, and peppery flavors – a combination that can be challenging to those more used to softer, sweeter olive oil. Bitterness and pepperyness indicate the presence of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, and other “minor components” of top-quality olive oil that make it so healthy.

Mueller argues that most of the oil sold in Europe and America does not meet the definition of EVOO, for three main, sometimes interrelated, reasons. The first two are objective – the oil exceeds regulatory standards for free fatty acids, peroxides, or other elements, or the oil had been adulterated. Adulteration has been a problem with EVOO since ancient times. Oil has been labeled and sold as EVOO, even though it has been cut with seed or vegetable oil or with refined olive oil. Refined olive oil is the trickiest because it comes from olives, but has been processed with heat or chemicals that remove bad odors or flavors, but also remove the healthy elements of the oil.

The third reason is harder to pin down because it depends on the flavor of the oil. If the oil does not have the flavor profile described above, it should not be called EVOO. It may have bad flavors, such as moldy, rancid, cooked, greasy, metallic, or cardboard, or it may just lack the bitter and peppery flavors EVOO should have. Mueller makes the case for intentional mislabeling on the part of olive oil distributors trying to tap into a huge and growing market that demands the “extra virgin” label. That may be a big part of the problem, but flavor issues can also be the result of time. Olive oil is a natural fruit juice, so its flavor and aroma begin to deteriorate within a few months of milling, and quickly go downhill when the container is opened and the oil exposed to oxygen.

One drawback to Mueller’s book is a lack of organization. He combines chapters on the history of olive oil, the science and manufacturing of olive oil, recent olive oil scandals, and the current state of olive oil production in different countries. But he jumps around among these topics seemingly at random. Still, Extra Virginity is fascinating, argumentative, and enlightening. It will change the way you shop for and consume extra virgin olive oil.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Tom Mueller has a great website devoted to olive oil called Truth in Olive Oil where you can find all kinds of information of how to taste, buy, and use good quality EVOO.